Community Fast and Feast: Weeklong Developmental Workshop

The end of October marks the end of the harvest season. The temperature drops with the last of the leaves and a welcome stillness settles into the bare woods and land. It’s a time for quiet reflection and boisterous celebration. It’s a time for communities to gather and share in all the bounties and challenges that have surfaced over the past year.

In honor of this potent seasonal transition, Inner Wild hosts an annual contemplative community fast and feast workshop in Chesterfield New Hampshire at Hallelujah Farm. Dig out your sweater and your cider mug, dust off your journal and join us for a week in the country as we celebrate the harvest through individual and group exploration, nature connection, hiking, and contemplative reflection.

The structure of the program explores adult developmental theory, transformational leadership, systems theory, deep ecology, and relational awareness as they pertain to individual, social, and cultural transformation. These theoretical underpinnings and topics are addressed through both individual and group experiential practices including a three-day solo fast on the farm property. One-on-one calls are also facilitated with each participant before and after the week as a way to help introduce, frame, and integrate the experience.

In our fast paced culture, where constant busyness is the norm and expectation, sometimes the most revolutionary action we can offer is to simply push pause. Such an act allows us to catch up with ourselves, others, and the land. It also gives us the necessary space to reflect on where we have been, who we have become, and where we want to go. Through the restorative container of nature, community, contemplation, and celebration, this annual weeklong program offers folks the opportunity for such exploration.

For further information or questions please reach out to me at the below address. We hope to see you all this fall!

westonpew@yahoo.com

Schedule, cost, and travel info (all ages welcome)

Saturday October 24th:

-Arrive at 4pm

-Dinner at 6:00pm

-Fire/Intro/Socialize

Sunday October 25th:

-Breakfast 7:15-8:15

-Brief Intro’s,

-Coffee/Tea break

-Exploring the boundaries between self and landscape

-Lunch 12:00 – 1:30 pm

-1:30-5:00pm Theory, dialog, and sharing around the morning’s creative practice

-Dinner 6:00pm

-Fire: Dialog – The Power of Story: How individual and cultural narratives shape worldviews, systems and experience.

Monday 26th:

-Breakfast 7:15-8:15

-Morning: Overview of human developmental theory 8:30-10.

-Coffee/Tea break

-10:30-12:00 Dialog: Contemplative practice and the reinvention of ritual and ceremony

-1:30–3:00 camp set up

-3:00-5:00 setting intentions for the fast/stirring the interior soil.

-5:30-6:30 light dinner

-7:00 Fire/Solo fast begins (three days of solitude, silence, and fasting. Camping out on the land in encouraged but not mandatory).

Tuesday 27: Solo Fast

Wednesday 28: Solo Fast

Thursday 29: Solo Fast

-Sunset gather for closing and end of fast

-Dinner (7:30pm)

-Fire

Friday October 30th: Hike Day! Mt. Monadnock.

-Breakfast 7:15-8:15

-Lunch 12-1

-Dinner: 5:30-6:30

-Movie: Planetary followed by dialog

Saturday October 31st:

– 7:15-8:15

– 8:30 Fast stories

-Lunch

-Finish fast stories

-Dialog on reincorporation, anchors, how to support, etc.

-Community Dinner, inviting folks from the larger community (Brattleboro/Chesterfield/Keen) to share a meal and hear some of the insights gained from the week.

Sunday November 1st:

-Morning: Breakfast

-9:00–10:30 closing dialogue around next steps/action steps.

-Closing

-Noon: Lunch/Depart

Cost

All food and board included:

$750 for those who camp out during the fast.

$850 for those who do not camp during the fast.

Travel

-The Farm is located outside of Chesterfield New Hampshire, about a four-hour drive from NYC and a two-hour drive from Boston.

*For those camping you’ll need the appropriate camping gear (a tent and a warm sleeping bag) for late fall conditions in New England.